


Beloved

by Just-kent-ing-around (FallenBleedingAngel)



Series: Aubades to the Sun [2]
Category: DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Don't copy to another site, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Immortality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 06:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19145434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallenBleedingAngel/pseuds/Just-kent-ing-around
Summary: Clark muses on his friendships, and the people he loves. As the years come faster and they grow older, he realizes he has to cherish them while he can.Another installment in Aubades to the Sun.





	Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> This will have very irregular updates, which means, basically whenever I feel like it. This wasn't easy to write, I admit to tearing up a lot, because character deaths aren't easy to write, and this entire work in particular has a very heavy emotional toll. Also, this work isn't in any way, shape, or form, connected to This is His Love, another work in Aubades to the Sun.
> 
> That being said, this work will be appropriately tagged, and if it isn't your cup of tea, I bid you to click the back button and go about your day.  
> I sincerely hope you enjoy, for all it might bring you to tears.

 

_“ Time, is not on our side_

_But I pretend that it's alright..._

_Before you leave,_

_You must know you are beloved.”_

_\- Beloved, Mumford & Sons _

 

* * *

**Denial**

 

Clark realizes the truth when he is thirty five. He locks himself in the Fortress of Solitude, watching and listening to the world pass him by.

He screams.

He cries.

He shouts to God, knowing he’ll never receive answers.

He almost tries to go for Kryptonite, a small dagger encased in a glass display, but stays his hand, staring vacantly as it glitters in the light of the Arctic. He tries to deny the truth - running his fingers through his hair, desperately looking for a gray he’ll never find.

He fails.

The world calls his name, both of them, and Clark does not answer - can’t force himself to push out of this bubble. As if he could lie to himself anymore than he already did.

Eventually, Bruce beats on the doors to the Fortress, half frozen, screaming himself hoarse. Clark shuffles over slowly, half wanting to wait until Bruce had no other choice but to turn back. He opened the door instead.

Bruce skulked in, and for once, Clark wished his outside looked as ragged as he felt.

Bruce looked at him, his silence asking a million questions.

“Clark, what’s wrong? What happened?” His voice was gruff, and Kal-Ex automatically brought the temperature in the Fortress to a habitable human climate.

“Kal, tell me what the hell is going on.” Bruce grumbled, taking off his mask, and crowding Clark.

Clark rounded his shoulders, - opening and closing his mouth, no sound would come. He was too afraid to tell the truth. Too afraid to speak _it_.

Clark did the only thing he could, he shook his head - and cried.

Bruce stood stiffly, eyes flickering as Clark broke into pieces.

How could you tell your best friend that you had the one thing the bad guy always wanted?

The one thing the heroes in stories always looked for?

The one thing, that you would’ve given anything to never have?

How could he look Bruce in the eye, and tell him, he would never die, living on and on until the memory of their days was nothing but dream?

He clung to Bruce, wrapping his arms around him as tight as he dared, sobbing into his shoulder. Bruce didn’t speak after that, but his arms hugged back, tucking Clark into the crook of his neck.

  


* * *

**Anger**

 

His anger, Clark found, had never served a purpose but to make him forget his control. He trembled with every step, and hoped the earth didn’t crumble below him.

He smiled at the world, sharp and vicious in a way he’d never known before and _meant_ it.

He didn’t go home anymore, barely managing to keep himself in check whenever Ma called. Instead, he went to the Fortress, and he hit, and hit, and _hit_ , until the ice shattered around him and he refroze it with his breath.

He allowed himself to part the ocean with a lazy sweep, told himself it was alright when he scared off the polar bears with the constant shakes.

He didn’t allow himself to be anything but angry. Because if he did - he’d go straight to being terrified.

 

* * *

**Bargaining**

 

There was little to no bargaining for Clark. What could he do, play poker with Death and hope he lost? Jump into a black hole and hope he didn’t come out alive at the other end? Drink liquid Kryptonite and hope it was a peaceful death?

There was no one and nothing to bargain with...after all, hadn’t Doomsday proven it would never be permanent?

 

* * *

**Depression**

 

Clark had never been, in any sense of the word, _normal_. He floated proudly above the JLA, watching them inaugurate new members, and did not weep. They were young, and Clark remembered being that young, a whole, seemingly finite life ahead of him. He wondered if as he aged, he would forget.

Clark did not fall into a depression, and confine himself to his bed. He still ate, pretending to eat with gusto, - even if it tasted like ash and saw dust the entire way down.

Instead, he worked himself so he didn’t have to think about it. He made sure to keep it quiet, knowing the others would worry, and the last thing they ever needed to do was worry, especially for _him_.

A little overwork wouldn’t kill him. Nothing would.

He worked, and typed, and _gave_ until one day, he woke up and realized, the truth would never change.

He would always live, and the world around him would always die.

 

* * *

**Acceptance**

 

Acceptance had come slowly, and in pieces. He’d met Bruce for lunch one day, just the two of them enjoying a rare sunny day in Gotham. There was no reporting, or investigating to be done. Clark exhaled peacefully, watching the normally dour people of Gotham beam and laugh, the city riving with life.

Clark had arrived early that day, listlessly scrolling through Twitter, and liking cat pictures. He smiled when Bruce arrived, putting his phone down onto the table - and stopped.

Bruce walked steadily, but something in his leg twinged, an old injury that had never healed completely. He sat straight but not even his posture could stop the stoop of aging. Clark watched as the sun caught on the gray strands in his hair, - and the wrinkles around his eyes - had they always been there? He wondered, noticing all the little things about him.

The wrinkles, the aging, they did not detract from his beauty, as Clark took him in, this _new_ Bruce who he had never taken the time to look at before. Who’d changed so gradually, Clark hadn’t bothered to look closer.

“Everything alright, Clark?”

“Yeah.” Clark fumbled with his phone, shoving it into his pocket, “It’s just - you look _different_.”

Bruce paused for a moment, and then asked, with a furrowed brow, “Different how?”

“Just different.” Clark answered, failing to find how to arrange the words so they did not offend.

_The way your hair glints in the sunlight_ , he wanted to say, _when did all those beautiful grays start taking over the black?_

_When you smile,_ he thought, _your eyes close, and the corners, they wrinkle. - Your body, it smiles with you._

_You sit relaxed now,_ Clark stares, at his loose shoulders, _you never would have done that before, always ready and looking for the next thing coming your way._ Except, he didn’t need to now, did he? His children carried on Batman’s Legacy, and Bruce had retired with little fanfare, and much love.

_Your eyes,_ Clark mused, as Bruce sat in peace with him, not worried about his silence, like he once would’ve been, _they’re peaceful now._

_You’ve grown. And aged. And gotten old. Let go of the things of youth, and never let it dim your light. Took the counsel of years, and let time touch your body, but never your spirit. You have changed, - and I have stayed the same._

Clark can say none of this, - and so he doesn’t. If he tried, his voice would only fail. Instead, he asks over Alfred, and his health, reaching out to squeeze Bruce’s hand in comfort. With the wind, and their silence, his thoughts are lost to time and memory.

 

* * *

 

Acceptance doesn’t make the pain easier, as he hold his mother’s hand, her breath growing frailer by the second. Clark can hear her heart thumping a steady, declining rhythm, but he does not weep.

She does not want to see him cry, - and he will give his mother all his love, and happiness, and save the grief for when her heart no longer beats.

“I love you, Clark, my baby.” Martha’s wrinkled hand holds his, and Clark’s mind is thrown back to a day, years ago, when he’d visited and she’d had company over.

_“Sorry about taking up so much time, Martha, but really, your apples are the best thing ever-” The woman stops as he stoops into the doorway, smiling at his mother, with a thick brown suitcase full of luggage._

_“Oh, what a lovely grandson. Still visiting, I see.” She smiles, and Martha and him freeze and nod, as she waves goodbye, leaving her to her conclusions._

_“I don’t really look that young, do I, Ma?” Clark frets in the mirror later that afternoon, and his mother hugs him from behind._

_“Don’t you worry about that. You just have good genetics is all.” Martha kisses his cheek, pulling him away from the mirror, “Now come on, you’ve got dinner to make, and I’ve got to get started on the pie.”_

_Clark pushes aside his worries, pretending to let his mother pull him along, “Alright, Ma.”_

“I love you too, Ma.” His voice warbles, as he puts a hand to his throat, trying to not to clam up.

“You be good now, and-” Martha wipes at the tear that insistently rolls down his face, her hand shaking, “Oh, sweetheart, we always knew this day was coming. Let everyone take care of you. I won’t be here to do it, anymore. You listening to me, Clark?”

“I am, Ma. I will. I’ll let them stuff me full of every pie in the world.” Clark cried, although he _promised_ himself not to cry. “It’ll never be as good as yours, Ma.”

“Doesn’t matter, you eat that pie, even if it tastes like rust, and keep livin’ life even if it hurts to breath without me. You’re my son, - and I don’t want to see you until you’ve grown just as old as me.” Martha tuts, staring him down and making him feel like a five year old.

“I _promise_.” He kisses her hand, watching as she closes her eyes. “Ma?”

“Yeah?” She doesn’t open her eyes as she answers.

“Will you-” Clark clears his hoarse throat, trying to memorize the way his mother’s voice creaks with age, “Will you say hi to Pa for me?”

“You betcha.” She squeezes his hands, and Clark can barely feel her.

He sits, and he waits, as the sun sets and the moon rises.

Martha Kent sleeps, that night, that hot, hot, July night, and she never wakes.

Clark stays at her bedside until dawn the next day, blankly calling the coroner's office.

He doesn’t fight when they take her body, and offer their condolences, acceptance crawling sluggishly up his throat like bile. Sinking into his bones like lead.

How much longer, he thinks, until he sits at everyone else’s bedside, and weeps until he can no longer stop? He sits on the porch, only staring up when arms wrap around him, and the Justice League settle next to him, swathing him in their warmth and love, he doesn’t ask how they know, they just _do_.

Like the roses his Ma used to grow every year, wrapped in her hair on her wedding day, he knows, even if she’s gone, - others will make sure he’ll always have a piece of her around.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but he does.

 

* * *

 

Clark spends a week in the Fortress, the world no longer needing Superman as much as it had in his youth. He creates an illusion. A mask, not for him, but for the world.

Even if he had accepted his immortality, it didn’t mean his family would.

 

* * *

 

Overtime, slowly, the ever-youthful Clark Kent _ages._

 

* * *

 

Bruce, Diana, Barry, Hal, Arthur, and Oliver, laugh like school children as he panics and breaks a table in half when Diana points out a small gray hair, right in his _curl_.

He pretends to grumble the rest of the day, watching as they breathe a sigh of relief, and Hal drags him off to teach him about ‘older people hobbies.’

Bruce tries to throw a party, one last chance to catch Clark’s ‘youth.’ Clark firmly refuses, and the rest of his week is spent in awkward congratulations, as friends peter into his life, all beaming and wondering when he’ll wrinkle.

Clark is sixty two when he starts to complain about his knees, and the retired Justice League finally stops joking about his monumental freak when he’d noticed crow’s feet around his eyes.

Bruce and Barry join in, each acting exaggeratedly like they can never get up on their own.

Dick kindly offers a wheelchair, and soon enough the jokes are forgotten everyone floundering to get away from his well meaning gestures.

 

* * *

 

The day Clark hits seventy is monumental. Not just because it’s his birthday. Or because Big Belly Burger finally starts making the Zero-calorie, Zero-cholesterol Belly Buster, after years of Clark wheedling for a good burger. Or that they all go to celebrate said burger finally being released because Bruce said but didn't _say_ , it was actually his birthday present.

No, it was because Superman announced his retirement to the world. Civilian and hero alike flocked to Metropolis for one last speech, as Superman disappeared into obscurity. Into the annals of history. A paragon above the shoulders of giants, not a mere man, but a legend.

Sitting in the Fortress, the past flickering in his minds' eye, Clark thought as he felt the Earth turn, Humanity had stepped into the sunlight and stopped needing him quite some time ago.

 


End file.
